Tories call for more censorship of the net

The British government is planning to increase censorship of the internet after its attempts to block content at an ISP level turned out to be a colossall failure.

Rather than just giving up on the idea of filtering the net, Cameron thinks that it would be a good idea to censor more and not just remove illegal content but also anything that might offend a Tory prude.

The idea is being pushed by the UK minister for immigration and security James Brokenshire, because Cameron has realised that he ended up with a lot of egg on his face over the last censorship campaign he attempted.

Brokenshire, whose name sounds like a bankrupt county council, has called for the government to do more to deal with “unsavoury,” rather than illegal, material online.We guess he means us.

Again he had to use the sad excuse of terrorist propaganda as a reason for the censorship. Brokenshire said that terrorist propaganda online has a direct impact on the radicalisation of British people and it was important to remove terrorist material hosted in the UK or overseas.

Jaani Riordan, a barrister specialising in technology litigation, toldWired.co.uk that the government was bringing in censorship and doing so would breach the European Convention of Human Rights, related to freedom of expression.

Knowing this, the Government prefers to put pressure on private companies to self-censor. In a situation like this, in which we find ourselves today. Indeed Brockenshire says the government is considering a “code of conduct” for internet service providers and companies, and a potential system whereby search engines and social media platforms actually alter their algorithms so that said “unsavoury” content is less likely to appear.

So far though there is no indication what a new beefed up internet filter list that the government would be pushing on ISPs would look like, or how it will be engineered to work.

The suggestion appears to be that the government will tell the industry what it finds offensive and they will voluntarily have to agree.

The Home Office insisted that all this is part of a new effort to take down “terrorist” content overseas, where much of it is being posted.